Tyrion and DorianOberyn. Oh man that there is some serious foreshadowing.

Ser Dontos. I am surprised this subplot picked back up; I figured they would just drop it.

Arya and the Hound's scene at the end. Marvelous example of changing the dialogue from the book while keeping the scene pretty much exactly intact.

Brienne and Jaime. Nuff said.

-- for an alternative viewpoint: Thad's dog reviews Game of Thrones, Season 4, Episode 1 --

i do not like this show. 1st thing on show is dead dog. last thing on show is screaming & loud noises.i sleep for most of show because it is just human making lots and lots and lots and lots of human sounds at each other but ending make me scared. i look sideways at man now. maybe he will poke me with sharp thing & set me on fire? why he watch this show.

I read from cast interviews that this season is going to be the one that starts to get away from the books so that, when they catch up (if they catch up) they can keep going. Not sure what that means for the plot at this point but the show is looking good. Dragon lady continues to be the weakest story. I so WANT to care about her story but the rest of the show has SO MUCH other shit going on that when you get to her its like, "Oh, she's still walking across the desert freeing everyone, just like the last season and change."

-- for an alternative viewpoint: Thad's dog reviews Game of Thrones, Season 4, Episode 1 --

i do not like this show. 1st thing on show is dead dog. last thing on show is screaming & loud noises.i sleep for most of show because it is just human making lots and lots and lots and lots of human sounds at each other but ending make me scared. i look sideways at man now. maybe he will poke me with sharp thing & set me on fire? why he watch this show.

Joxam wrote:I read from cast interviews that this season is going to be the one that starts to get away from the books so that, when they catch up (if they catch up) they can keep going. Not sure what that means for the plot at this point but the show is looking good.

Haven't seen much of that yet -- what I HAVE seen is the show picking up subplots it had dropped. I already mentioned Ser Dontos; we also saw Janos Slynt again this week. Remember Janos Slynt? He speared Ned in the back during the confrontation with Jaime, leading to everything that's happened since; Tyrion sent him to the Wall for murdering babies (and also because the Hand of the King has a vested interest in not keeping the guy who stabbed the last Hand in the back around). Now he's buddied up with the evil drill sergeant and the two of them don't like Jon Snow very much; that's a pretty big conflict in the books but I didn't figure we'd see much of it in the show.

Which brings us to:

Dragon lady continues to be the weakest story. I so WANT to care about her story but the rest of the show has SO MUCH other shit going on that when you get to her its like, "Oh, she's still walking across the desert freeing everyone, just like the last season and change."

And see, Dany's story is compelling as hell in the books, but it really doesn't translate well to the screen. Jon's got that same problem coming up -- yes, we've got a pretty badass showdown with the Wildlings coming, but after that the conflict turns more talky for awhile.

There's a lot of that coming. The world is big and a lot of the major cast is about to do some traveling. And some of them are going to be cooling their heels in captivity for awhile (Theon isn't even in the third or fourth book -- though half the cast isn't in the fourth book; that's where Martin starts splitting it up by character instead of by chronological order).

The biggest departure from the books: boy, that guy sure seemed to be implying that Cersei had an abortion, didn't he? That seems pretty uncharacteristic for TV Cersei. Although -- spoiler for the first book(?) that was explicitly contradicted in the TV version -- Cersei reveals that she terminated a pregnancy by Robert in the books, TV Cersei told a much more sympathetic story of losing her firstborn to illness. Of course, it could all be a red herring and they were referring to something else.

I'd really like to see Rickon and Osha's story play out a bit. That's one of the subplots the books have back-burnered and probably the one I'm most interested in seeing. There's potential in Gendry's story, too, which has now diverged from how things went in the books.

I feel like we should separately mark "last night's show spoilers" versus "stuff from later in the books that pertains to last night's show spoilers".

Anyway, the latter: I didn't catch the latter, but I did notice that Joffrey gave his goblet to Margaery to hold while he opened up the pie, and that was the same cup Tyrion picked up and brought him. Soo...

のほも is such a good word?? the concept is kind of hard to fully get across in translation, but basically it means a feeling of pure, deep, platonic affection, and i think thats beautiful

Yeah, there's been much to do about this on the internet and "it wasn't in the books" or "it was consensual in the books"

Someone posted a snippet of what was in the books, and they could have taken it out of context. But I think the people saying that Cersei "pounding her feeble fists against his chest" was totally fine and consensual are more deplorable than the show creators they're criticizing.

My main problem with that scene was that it felt completely tonally off. It did not feel like either character was acting like themselves, and not in a good "their lives have been irreparably altered" sort of way. I think people bandying about the term character assassination to refer to it are being kind of hyperbolic, but only because we haven't seen the fallout yet -- this could be a super bad and frustrating turn predicated on what feels like a scene made entirely because

Right, there's also a line about how she's protesting and he doesn't hear it which is fairly telling. It was brutal to watch the scene and I'm not sure it was entirely necessary, but anybody on the "it was consensual in the books" or "Jaime's now irredeemable THANKS SHOW WRITERS" didn't pay attention to the scene in the book, forgot that this isn't the first awful thing Jaime's done in the name of taking Cersei to the bone zone, and thought he was still redeemable after his attempted child murder.